← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
How To Create A Holistic "Land And Expand" SEO Strategy
00:31:14
Loading summary
Transcript48 lines
- [00:00]
Tyson Stockton
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything podcast network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search podcast, Tyson Stockton.
- [00:43]
Elliot Tsai
Marketing channels often operate in silos. Teams rarely share valuable data, and more often than not, they end up competing against each other despite having a shared goal. As SEOs, we can't be successful without other channels. We are more likely, though, to partner with channels that we directly need to execute, like product teams, engineering teams, analytic and content teams. We're more likely to crack jokes towards other marketing teams than actually working with them. But at the end of the day, there's far more to gain by us working with these other channels, and a rising tide lifts all boats. This is the Voice of Search Podcast. My name's Tysing. And joining us today is Elliot Tsai, senior growth manager of SEO and ASO at TextNow. TextNow is the only carrier to offer free nationwide coverage, including unlimited talk text plus 5G data. Today, Elliot's going to be sharing with us how to strategically align marketing channels and amplify your SEO results. Elliot, welcome back.
- [01:44]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah. Hi, Tyson. I'm excited to be back here.
- [01:47]
Elliot Tsai
We were, we were catching up before, like, we hit record and I could have sworn it was like, like six months to a year. And it's like, it seems like it was over a year and a half. You've moved countries. Like, you're back in the Bay. How you been doing?
- [02:05]
Tyson Stockton
Good. I'm excited to be back to the Bay. But I do like Canada too. Before I lived in Canada. I still love it. I always say I'm a court of Canadian now. Am I really?
- [02:15]
Elliot Tsai
I mean, Canada, I've only had good experiences there, but it is good to have you back in California. I mean, new company. So obviously a lot's changed. And even, even before we were chatting, like, I've always been kind of like, interested in, like, you're, you know, somewhat unique angle of not just focused on SEO, but also, like, kind of other marketing channels. And I think as SEOs, like, we oftentimes kind of fall into that mindset where it's like we just look at our own piece rather than like the larger, bigger objective. And so maybe like just to set things off, like how would you kind of advocate to the SEOs out there of how they should really be kind of like thinking of other channels and like how should we be viewing these other teams that at the end of the day like they're working on the same goal that we are.
- [03:14]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah. So for my experience, I'm not a traditional SEO person. I know we have talked about before we had recording and for me it's like I'm come from a pay influencer background. So like and when I started learning SEO really jump in this amazing world. It's like I found SEO is really interesting. It's a foundation of everything. And I always just joke around and talk about with other focus I think about Google, how Google really started. Google actually started from SEO and expand to pay. And so for me we just reverse opposite and. And after learning SEO is like it make me understanding SEO is the foundation of everything. But other marketing channel have what they're good at. So we should partner really closely together to create more like a holistic view. So SEO is always just a part of SEO. Can. Can be like the whole user journey funnel and sometimes like for example pay pay really focusing more like conversion because they need to understand the return of each spent. So for me just like this is miracle of SEO. Just like a lot of people don't know SEO, so they just like SEO. SEO people come here just to fight or just come here to screw my plan and my strategy because we don't know what they're doing. And we always just like, yeah, that's what what we thought is right. But it's not what they thought is right. So but we just need to understand what's their goal. Understanding what their knowledge and then we exchange knowledge. You'll feel it's so fun because you're fully understanding like how to improve SEO. Sometimes like rank drop. But you can use other marketing channel to cover you or try to improve your user experience and your rank will improve because it's all caring about the user. So that's why I always say like learn SEO foundation and expand to other marketing channel and create holistic view.
- [04:57]
Elliot Tsai
I mean, I guess I haven't talked about it much on the podcast, but like I actually started on the paid side and it was through paid search that I came and I, you know, started to learn SEO and then I kind of fell into that. But it's like yeah, like I started my career on the paid search side. And so it's like I've always had like, I don't know, I guess some familiarity or some like just awareness to what goes on there. And I don't know if it's maybe because it's like we always have to like fight so much for budget as SEOs. But it's like in some ways it's like we have a little bit of like that Napoleon syndrome as like SEOs. And maybe it's like we're just envious these other marketing channels get like the big budgets and everything else. We're just like hey, like we're bringing in a lot of the revenue too. Like what about us? But like maybe coming, coming back around though to it is like what advice do you have for maybe those that have been solely focused on like SEO and maybe they don't have the experience working with the other channels as much. How should SEOs be looking at these other channels? And it's like how can we learn from them? How can we partner with them? What advice would you have for the SEOs to better partner?
- [06:15]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, so for my first advice it will be like operate SEO like a paid channel. So every thing should be like revenue driven. So you have just mentioned. Oh we always fight for resources. Why other team always have big budget, be creative stuff, have agency to work with, do cool stuff because they know the return. So for me if I put on the pay ads hat on you will understand how do you estimate your SEO strategy and turn into a revenue forecast. And if you can do that and present to your leadership, it's easy to get buy in and you can tell them like you put $1, give me these resources, how many estimated of revenue you can get. So that's my first advice like really think about perform marketing way. But in the SEO world, second advice is like be open minded to talk with other different marketing channel to learn. I feel that's so important to learn. It's not like oh, we keep saying SEO is the right SEO is like unbiased. Good for you. There are other marketing channel so it's a part of user journey. Like really try to learn and brainstorm. So for me the way I work with a lot of team is like I will give them guidance and they'll give me idea and actually like if they give me 10 idea sometimes I'll just reject one. Most of the time I just reject maybe maximize one one of it because I know that one is for sure we should not try when her SEO the rest of night like maybe, maybe not. Maybe it Will work. Then I'll be like okay, just follow these guidance and just roll it out and then we'll figure out from there. Because sometimes you'll feel other marketing channel ideas way more creative which thought about it and other marketing channel like SEO is really SEO expert like us, we are really data driven perform marketing. They are really data driven but it's in a different way. We know how to offer like SERP intents, we know how to do keyword research. But paid team, they always they know how to optimize conversion. So think about if we partner together top of funnel is good for SEO and then conversion work with pay and you push people lower and revenue increase. So that might advice I will say for people in SEO World fair and.
- [08:13]
Elliot Tsai
I think like paid becomes like the obvious one because it's like yep, we're both in you know the same placement basically like we're both looking at kind of search queries targeting keywords, those elements. And I love the piece that you're saying on especially of like yeah, learn from them on how they're building kind of like more of ROI business cases towards it. But like how about some of like the other channels? Like I think like social media is an interesting one. Like I've always kind of found that like not that I'm a personal like high user of social media but it's like I found it interesting in the sense of like yeah, if you want to find things that are emerging SEO like we're oftentimes looking more rear view mirror like and we're looking kind of like backwards like search volumes. All the things. It's all like historical data where I feel like social is like a little more kind of like immediate emerging. Like how would you say or like what's kind of the angle and the learnings that you think like social media as a channel can have to SEOs.
- [09:23]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah. So for social media, social media for me is just like it's a different way of people finding information now. So if you think about like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube even like ChatGPT AI things people keep talking about it, it's like people like yeah, people might have maybe like Google traffic will decrease and then people go to do AI chatgpt more. But if you look at a report from Google it's actually not the truth. Like their traffic increased last year more so for me. But what I really mean is now people have more different way to find different information. So it's good thing. So how do we actually partner social media? Like social media is Always come out something really trendy and very visualized, very appealing. So like Instagram images, so beautiful, so great. People like to click about it. YouTube video is another big trend. Why so. So for me, just like be honest, I don't like to read article, I like to see video, I like to see images, infogram all those stuff. So like partner with social media. Like it benefits SEO. I think I don't need to mention a lot like yeah, we can ask more crawler from social media to acquire a page index faster. We can get referral traffic, we can build a topic of story by using social media. All those work. So for me just like think a different way. Don't think these channels are fighting with SEO traffic and don't treat them as a threat, treat them as a partner to benefit you. Yeah. And then you can also help them too. So for me that's always things through.
- [10:53]
Elliot Tsai
About social media whenever I think of kind of like social media, like I don't know, years back I was, you know, working with ebay and we were talking about just like identifying new pages that we wanted to prioritize and like, and it was really like targeted more towards like internal linking algorithms. And it's like we recognize, we're like, hey, like we're, we've been late on a few things so maybe we can, you know, when we're trying to think of different ways and someone in the room was like, hey, let's go to like social media and maybe social listening tools. And still I remember this now because it's like I sat in that meeting and then BTS came up as like an example of something that was emerging at the time. And I'm sitting there like in the meeting and I'm like, I have no idea who bts. And so it's like I remember having to actually like search like what is bts? As I was in the meeting like talking about that, it's like, oh yeah, we should have created this page two months ago. But it was like, yeah, it was from social listening which was clearly on their radar far before it was on the SEO team's radar. And so I always think that that was like kind of a good call out from it.
- [12:08]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, for me now actually still using social a lot. Same thing that what you say, like when we're doing serpent test observation of the keyword, we only go on Google engine. And I always joke around like SEO is more like, oh, copy what compiler have make it better, build something different and how do you find that different part which compare doesn't cover that's a part of social media can help a lot. I know before Twitter, I know now it's X but we use Twitter a lot to find the trendy one. We also go social media to find their hashtag. We also find certain we know our target audience. We go find those influencers which actually have our target and see what are they posting because they are the first one to do all the research on their own to post what the trendy article. So I don't need to do a lot of work. Sometimes they already do the work for me. I copy they post this and like okay that's next thing and you create an article and then the cool thing is like we'll just create it and the trend is you just hop on that train at the same time. So it's like really fun to do and easy.
- [13:07]
Elliot Tsai
How. How about like kind of maybe less thought of channels. Like I mean I know you know you're working on some like ASO stuff like what are I think paid search social. Like those are probably like the first top of mind other channels that people think of. Like when you think of other teams or other channels to partner with like what are some of. Yeah the top ones that you're going towards.
- [13:33]
Tyson Stockton
So for me like the first one I'll go to is technically like data team. So I have shipped. I'm changing in different company working with different clients. I work a small website startup even to like really big one like the current company. I have like million of traffic monthly is all come to a root. The data is always a pain for everyone. The issue is not because we don't have a tool. It's just like data person. They're not SEO people. They don't know what to look into. They can provide what we want but the things that our job is to tell them what we want, what data we need and then we also figure out the logic. For example I actually have a data background when I look at gsc GSC backend have different data source and the logic is different. How do you read the data correctly? And when GSE paired into GA4 a lot of people talk about GA4 is complicated, GA4 is messy. I don't know a lot of feedback, a lot of good things too. But for me that's always pro and con. You just need to understand the logic and bridge it together. So work with your data team. Make sure the data that you are sharing are come from the same the source of true we're coming from the same dashboard and how do we put a logic behind for example, like really one simple one. Some people look at multi touch, first touch, last touch. How do you track the data? Should I report sessions? Should I report total user? But total user and ga4 have a different way of logic. Like first thing work with data team. So important when you have data then you can read the data where the drop off is and then you work with different marketing channel.
- [15:05]
Elliot Tsai
So I mean I got to double back a little bit on that. There's a lot of mixed feelings on GA4.
- [15:12]
Tyson Stockton
Yes.
- [15:14]
Elliot Tsai
Are you here saying it's not all bad? Because it's like it feels like the thorn in the side for a lot of people right now. Well, not right now, but like over the last few years.
- [15:25]
Tyson Stockton
I mean I'm just trying to be nice to myself. I'm a ua, like universal analytic. I love it. After I switch to DA4 it's spent me a while to really understand what's going on. Even now I'm still trying to figure it out.
- [15:37]
Elliot Tsai
Yeah, yeah, and I feel you on that. Speaking of data, so like data sharing strategies, like do you have any kind of like recommendations for the SEOs out there that maybe aren't sure what to ask for or like where would you point them of kind of like key data sources that maybe could be beneficial for them in their own practices?
- [16:04]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, so for me it's like data source for SEO. I always start from free because if you really track based on like SEO, why we cannot get budget because people always think about, I don't know, returns. So try to cut your cost. First Google search console for certain most important and also Google always heard a lot of voice from us giving feedback. They try to tweak it better. So that's a source of true. And second I using GA4 but I know when the website become bigger to a certain stage you might need to create your own data internal source too. But GA4 is free. Why are you not using that? And use their API integrated to the cloud and then pull it from a BA tool. So for me it's like these two toys a must. And third party tool wise is like personally I like Ahrus and Semrush. I know they're like sometimes they're overlapping but I always have two of them because I understand their back end like how they do their logic, the way they calculate keyword difficulty, the way the keyword capture volume, the spider they send out is really different. Different way of delaying, different way of calculating visibility too. So I always have these tools to really do like keyword research, compare research. Just like give me a directional way to make sure I'm doing the right thing. And for technical SEO. Screaming frog. Because from the price range, right? Great. But if you want fancy one. Spotify. I do use Spotify before, but it's fancy. And I personally also like stat. People always forget stat. I really like stat.
- [17:31]
Elliot Tsai
Right.
- [17:32]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah. Stat is like a tool. I can track feature snippets.
- [17:35]
Elliot Tsai
It is, it's definitely forgotten. And I mean it's. It's been a while. Honestly, like since I've used them, I always felt like, you know, it just had like that utility type property and it's like, sure, the UX was kind of like locked up in like Windows 98 kind of style.
- [17:54]
Tyson Stockton
Yes.
- [17:54]
Elliot Tsai
But it was just, it was simple, consistent, like I didn't have any problems with it. Like, I know, at least I've heard that like UX is different now. But I totally agree with you on it. And it's like there's a lot of like emerging ones now. Like as far as some of the, you know, like LLM tracking tools, like, it feels like a brand new wave and you know, there's several ones like popping up from that. Like have you, have you played around with any of those like LLM tracking tools recently?
- [18:27]
Tyson Stockton
I don't play around but I use like, I do use like Chat GDP or even Gemini to do explore, idea generating or summary stuff for like, for example, when doing like creating content, creating a brief, like sometimes it's like, give me some idea, I need some idea. And then when you talk with a coworker, they give you idea. But like we always just stuck in our long loop because like in marketing world we always talk about like we live in our own bubble. We never know what, what our audience really is because we're not the target audience. Then Chat GDP or like Gemini will be a really good way to explore and actually do both of them. Because as you know, AI now still have a lot of issue. They are trying to grow and we don't know who's going to be the final winner. So I always do both of them.
- [19:10]
Elliot Tsai
Do you have a personal prediction or favorite? For me personally, it's like I feel like it comes in waves where it's like I'll find myself going one direction and then I get a little frustrated by like some of the results and they'll jump the other way. Like, do you, do you have a preference?
- [19:29]
Tyson Stockton
I personally like Gemini more than Chat gdp. The reason is like there's multiple things and there's multiple news about like Gemini. Like Google is having focusing this a lot and then they're integrating Gemini into Google search. And from an SEO expert all of us like we need to hop on the train earlier than anyone. Like why we don't start really using Gemini understand Gemini giving feedback for Google train their Gemini better. It's also when Gemini become better, it's also make the search engine become better. And our opinion also got feedback from them too. So we get feedback from the search engine, it's from Gemini and Google listen for it too.
- [20:07]
Elliot Tsai
True. So on that point I've heard some debates going on on this as far as what's going to happen. You know it's like as of now most of the listenings within, you know, AI search or alarm search, whatever you want to call it is still like organic. When how like how do you. How do you feel like paid's going to enter in that? Because it's like I can't imagine that Google's going to sit back that much longer where they're not bringing paid ads further into whether it's AIO or even like the AI mode. I feel like at some point it has to be monetized more. Any sense or kind of feeling from your side on that?
- [20:50]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah. So for me it's like I do read the news like Google starts thinking integrating ad in AI overview. I'm not sure whether you see that news but I think they're doing it. But for me it's like I also see like AI overview appear in PAA too. So for me that maybe in the future you will see a sponsor ad in PAA or for example when you're using Gemini it's just a chat box. Maybe they will pop up a chat box ads in there too. Because my current company text now we're a telephone app. We do have a banner below when you're texting a messaging to so that is a way they can monetize a lot. So for me I didn't know I didn't work for Google. This is my idea. They might heard this and they'll pick it up and remember a daily idea. No just kidding.
- [21:39]
Elliot Tsai
Little kickback.
- [21:41]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah there's so many ways they can improve like getting monetizing. But I feel back to the root is like they also dare to screw about user journey and also try to like try to make it really biased because there's also a report coming out saying like Chat GDP and Gemini. If we compare these two like Google are more conservative about serving their AI answer compared to ChatGPT this obvious show like Google are really especially like Y and Ymyl like topic. So it means that Google really care about like their audience and their. Of course they need money, but they also really don't want to hurt a search a lot as they want because they hurt their search, they hurt their brand, they lost the audience and audience might switch to a different platform.
- [22:26]
Elliot Tsai
Yeah. And I still feel like they're kind of playing the long game. You know, it's like from like a data collection standpoint, they have a huge edge. And so it's like to me, I mean it's like you wonder kind of like, okay, like can they sit back too long? But it's like at the same time I feel like at some point the data advantage that they have has to play in to their favor. You know, it's like there's going to be some capabilities that I feel like is going to be unlocked that. I mean, maybe I'm completely misreading it, but it's like I feel like we haven't seen that come through yet. And it's. I don't know, I feel like it's, it's bound to happen. The. Unlike the monetization piece too. And I, I forget who pointed this out to me at this point now, which I'm sorry, whoever it was. But perplexity having like just blatant affiliate links. So it's like if you're like what are the best running shoes? Just straight up like the results are just affiliate links. It's like every single one's just straight up affiliate links. So it's like I'm like, okay, that's like interesting. You'd think it would be like, I don't know, not as obvious as just seeing it as like a parameter code like in the URL that you're sent to.
- [23:46]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah.
- [23:46]
Elliot Tsai
But I feel like that's probably also going to be like a, you know, a way that they could angle it. It's pay to play, type scenario.
- [23:55]
Tyson Stockton
Totally. And also like they haven't even integrated to their images or YouTube. Like that's a future thing. I feel they were integrated to like their video search, their image search. Maybe there's a chatbot on top and you type like certain stuff and they'll give you all the related one and then also pop up the AI generated one. I didn't know yet. Just in my head. And then people can pay what they want.
- [24:14]
Elliot Tsai
True. Yeah. Which is like, I feel like that is also something that's not fully been kind of like Leveraged or like tapped into yet? But yeah, no, I totally agree with you on that one. Coming back to the different channels though, so being someone that spent time, you know, working across like the different ones, I think like again if someone doesn't have that familiarity, like where would you recommend kind of they start. Like if it's just like okay, you don't have the experience working with these other channels. You know, we've talked about several of them at this point, but it's like is it just use them, play with them, Is it have conversations with other kind of like colleagues? Like what's the best kind of way to just start familiarizing yourself with these other channels?
- [25:03]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, so the first things I like to do is like Schedule 1 and 1 to with different team because I always feel like coffee chat or one on one is the fastest way to learn stuff. And then you also can ask them like is there anything you recommend you us to read? They always can send you a bunch of article. It's just like you ask us like can you send me an SEO 101? Trust me, I can send you like 10 pages, 20 pages easily. So for me they can do the same thing that how it started. And second is when you talk to them actually in our head we always like oh, how can this do on the website? How can this do on SEO? Then you can share an idea with them and just like can I pick your brain about this? And they're like yeah and it'll tell you even more. So I always start from human interaction first. Just schedule a zoom call. Believe me, if everyone worked remotely, we always want someone to talk with. It will be happy to do so or your life stressful. Get a beer, get a drink, hop on a zoom. Just chat. So that's the first thing. And the second thing, just read a lot of news. Not only focusing on SEO, I actually subscribe a lot of different channels like news what they're doing on. I have Pay1, I have SEO1, I don't have CRM1 but I do have social media one to talk about what new things are coming out. So just observe a lot and then you will just finally really understand like you as a user. Like just think like all the user is you. Like how will you approach and find this information if we want it?
- [26:32]
Elliot Tsai
That's great advice And I like the piece too of approaching it from like curiosity and questions and it's not like going to them being like hey I need this, like I need you to do something. It's like more of Just coming from like, hey, tell me about it. Maybe like striking up that first conversation is in your mind, like the best approach. Just being like asking kind of for a favor of like, hey, let me hear about this, like tell me about what you do kind of thing. Like, is it just that easy? Is like the curiosity side?
- [27:09]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, I always just like, for example, like for my pay team, I recently like, I haven't touched AdWord for years after joining SEO, but I know how ads were work. But it's over like 10 year. They have been evolving a lot, creating new different ads and for me that I have basic knowledge. So what I did is I literally schedule a call with one of my paid team and hop on a call just like, hey, can you share with me? Like, what are you doing? Curious about what you're testing? I want to learn about it because the things that you're testing might be helping to improve my SEO pieces. And second, you're like, oh, what is the trend? Like, what is your thought about the pay part in the future? What is it and what's your struggle so far? And then the last part you like, oh, I have some pages and like I have some idea. Can you actually generate like your thought on it or like pick your brain on it? They'll be happy to do so and they'll be like, okay, I will run the test for them and share with them. And last part is like I always push a little bit further, like can I get the essence of the tool? I'm not going to screw up everything. And then they'll be like, yes, you can. So now I'm Edwardss. I will go in to check their campaign secretly but not touching any their budgeting allocation stuff. Just try to check what kind of images are you, what kind of keyword bad, what kind of negative work they do and secretly integrate into SEO. And when you have questions, you can just immediately slack them. They can email respond to.
- [28:34]
Elliot Tsai
And then you also see what the budget is too. You know how much, how much budget is going.
- [28:40]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, did you know what budget is it? And you can fight for your budget?
- [28:44]
Elliot Tsai
Yeah, I like, I also with like search and because similarly it's like, I don't know, it's been over 10 years, maybe 15 years at this point. Like when I've actually ran like AdWords campaigns. And so one thing I've realized is everyone in paid search, regardless whether it's for or against, everyone has an opinion on bmax. And so it's like if you just go to someone and be like, hey, what do you think about pmax? It's like you're bound to hear some sort of long winded rant on whether they love it or hate it or like some opinion. But I don't think I've ever come across someone that's just like meh, yeah. Like it's like they either love it or hate it, but there's no tweet it seems.
- [29:28]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, but it's fun how I just feel. Talking to Core is always fun and it's just, I like dig more, ask them with their opinion and they'll just open it up. But don't do it in a group way though, because when you're in a group, people are not willing to share more stuff. It's always do one on one. That's my advice.
- [29:44]
Elliot Tsai
That's actually a really good reminder. And I think too it's like as SEOs we've had to learn this, we've had to learn how. Because it's like as SEOs we can't be successful on our own. We're one of the marketing channels that it's like you can't do anything without engineering, you can't do anything without content. An SEO left alone is just gonna just tell you what's going on. Like they're just gonna do audits doing that, but it's not actually gonna like come to any sort of fruition. And so we've learned that skill to work with these and I think it's just a nice reminder of like, hey, like apply that same piece into these other channels as well because by nature there's gonna be other things that you can pick up on.
- [30:29]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah.
- [30:30]
Elliot Tsai
Well, with that, that's going to wrap up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thanks again to Elliot Tsai from TextNow for joining us. If you'd like to get in contact with Elliot, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in the show notes or go on over and check out his company's website@textnow.com if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing knowledge, be sure to hit that subscribe button in your podcast or like and subscribe on YouTube and we'll be in your feed in the next following day. So that's it and that's all for today. Thanks for stopping by the Voice of Search podcast and we will see you on the next episode. Sa.